Author of "Refund" Karen Bender

Bender, distinguished visiting professor of creative writing at Hollins&nbsp;for the 2015-16 academic year, is the author of the story collection <em>Refund</em>, which was a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award for fiction. It was also on the shortlist for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize and was a <em>Los Angeles Times</em> bestseller. Her other books include <em>A Town of Empty Rooms </em>(Counterpoint Press) and <em>Like Normal People</em> (Houghton Mifflin), also a <em>Los Angeles Times</em> bestseller as well as a <em>Washington Post</em> Best Book of the Year and a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection.

Bender’s short fiction has appeared in <em>The New Yorker</em>, <em>Granta</em>, <em>Ploughshares</em>, <em>Zoetrope</em>, <em>Story</em>, <em>Narrative</em>, <em>The Harvard Review</em>, <em>Guernica</em>, and <em>The Iowa Review</em>. Her stories have appeared in <em>Best</em> <em>American Short Stories</em>, <em>Best American Mystery Stories</em>, and <em>New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best</em>, and have won two Pushcart Prizes. She is also the coeditor of the nonfiction anthology<em> Choice: True Stories of Birth, Contraception, Infertility, Adoption, Single Parenthood, and Abortion.</em>